Being and Nothingness (and Nail Polish)
Recently, I found myself engaged in a profound dialectic disguised as a casual video game session with a staff member at Bohnice. I will keep his identity shrouded in the veil of anonymity - basic ethics, you know. Somewhere between mashing buttons and staring at screens, he pointed out my black painted nails.
What started as a simple aesthetic compliment quickly devolved into a textbook case of Sartrean bad faith. He confessed a deep-seated yearning to paint his own nails, followed immediately by the crushing weight of the Panopticon: the fear of colleagues' stares and the desperate need to not be perceived as the "crazy one" in a psychiatric facility. It was tragic. He didn't just speak the words; he recited them. He sounded like a ventriloquist dummy parroting the invisible, judgmental voice of normative society. He was desperately clinging to his prescribed role as "The Staff," sacrificing his authenticity at the altar of institutional conformity.
The melancholy deepened as he recounted his youth. At fifteen, he was a glorious, androgynous blank slate. He reveled in the ambiguity, experiencing a fleeting period of radical freedom where his gender was an enigma to the outside world. But then came the ultimate biological betrayal: puberty. The testosterone hit, the bone structure hardened, the hair sprouted, and he was violently thrust into a starkly male phenomenology. He felt alienated in his own meat sack - a very Schopenhauerian tragedy of the physical form dictating the misery of the will.
His attempts to seek professional guidance were predictably absurd. A sexologist practically chased him out of the office - a brilliant, agonizing display of Foucault's medical establishment policing the boundaries of acceptable identity. And while he did eventually find a competent therapist, the entry fee for existential clarity in late-stage capitalism is a casual 2,000 CZK per session. A completely insane, gatekept luxury for any normal person functioning in this economy.
The sheer exhaustion of it all had broken him down to a point of passive nihilism. He wasn't asking to parade around in a grand display of radical sexuality or wear avant-garde couture; he just wanted the quiet, fundamental freedom of having a bit of pigment on his keratin. Just painted nails.
When I told him it was okay and that he shouldn't let fear dictate his presentation, the atmosphere turned incredibly sweet and sour. I pointed out that he sounded like a man who had completely surrendered. He defensively asked what made me say that. My answer was simple: because he had internalized the cage. But he doesn't deserve to live in it. No one does. People will always talk - they are condemned to run their mouths - but they do not possess the ontological authority to force you to feel differently about yourself.
Here is the underlying truth of it all: The gaze of the Other is absolute hell, yes, but it doesn't get to dictate your essence. We are not just static, defeated products of our hormones or our coworkers' narrow-minded perceptions. Authenticity doesn't have an expiration date. Whether you are 15, 35, or 80, the capacity to rebel against the absurd and reclaim your own canvas is always there. It is not the end of the world, not by a long shot. The metaphorical (and literal) paintbrush is still in his hand, and he has every right to use it. You can always make it back to yourself.